


Valentines and Denial 2.0

by amiraculousladybug



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Canon Divergence, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/M, Fluff, Rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 22:26:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10863345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amiraculousladybug/pseuds/amiraculousladybug
Summary: During a project, Adrien discovered that Marinette wrote the anonymous valentine. And now he can't stop noticing her.A rewrite of my old fic, "Valentines and Denial."





	Valentines and Denial 2.0

**Author's Note:**

> Valentines and Denial officially now has more hits here on AO3 than it has words, so I decided to commemorate by rewriting it from the ground up. My goal is to fix it up, tweak the parts where I made stupid mistakes or rushed things too much, all that good stuff, and overall just make it into a better story. I hope you like it!

Assigned partner projects are generally considered to be one of the banes of a student's existence, along with pop quizzes and excessive homework. But just this once, Marinette thought that the assignment had been a blessing rather than a curse. She and Adrien had been partnered together, and would get to work with each other for the next two weeks. She felt like she might explode with excitement. Granted, their time together would be dominated by their project, but still. Having this much time with Adrien all to herself felt like a dream come true. She was so caught up in daydreaming about their time together that it took her a minute to realize he was trying to get her attention.

“Marinette?”

“Y-yes?” she managed to sputter out. Someone at another of the library tables shushed her, and Marinette felt her cheeks grow warm in embarrassment. She hadn't meant to speak so loud. Adrien probably thought she was a socially awkward freak.

Whatever he thought, though, he kept it to himself and just smiled with his usual patience. “Do you have any ideas?” he asked. At the blank look she gave him, he prompted, “For our project?”

Marinette's face went red all over again. “Oh. Um, I thing I wrote some thinks—things! I think I wrote some things in my—my notebook. During class.” She scrambled to get her notebook out of her bag. Part of her wanted to crawl under the table and never come out. What if Adrien thought she had been ignoring him? Dear God, she was never going to make it through two weeks of this without making a total fool of herself. She'd already messed things up by imagining romantic “what if”s instead of just paying attention. Busy scolding herself, she passed over her notebook several times before actually thinking to grab it. She yanked it out of her bag hastily—spilling most of the contents in the process—and held it out to Adrien. “Here! I, um, the back is in the—the drawings are back the—I mean—”

Adrien took the notebook and flipped to the back, as if he'd somehow managed to decipher her incoherent babbling. His face brightened with that smile of his she liked so much. “These look great, Marinette!”

She had died and gone to heaven. That was the only explanation she could think of as to why Adrien was not only treating her like she wasn't a walking disaster but also praising her. The boy was an absolute angel. “Really?”

He nodded emphatically. “I love the ideas you've come up with,” he said. “We'll have no trouble getting a good grade on our project if we use one of these. The only thing is,” he added, “they're all so good, I'm not sure which one we should use.”

Marinette stared at him, dumbfounded. Adrien, probably uncomfortable with her staring, made a great show of looking over her sketches and notes again. She had finally begun to recover her power of speech when the smile dropped from his face abruptly.

“A-Adrien?” she asked, a little worried. “Is something wrong?” Why had he stopped smiling all of a sudden? He'd seemed so excited just a second ago, but now he was almost frowning.

Adrien's eyes snapped up to look at her. Her question seemed to take a minute to sink in, but then he shook his head and gave her another smile. “I'm fine,” he assured her. “Just thinking. We've got a lot of ideas to pick from.” He looked back down at her notebook and traced her handwriting with one finger.

He might say he was fine, Marinette thought, but he looked about ready to cry.

~

As soon as Adrien took a closer look at Marinette's handwriting, it was like someone had punched him in the gut. He almost choked on his own breath.

He knew this handwriting.

He'd traced this handwriting at night, examined the shape of each and every letter until he had it memorized, studied even the smallest details. He would recognize it anywhere. It was the handwriting from the anonymous valentine he'd received on Valentine's Day, the answer to his poem for Ladybug. He'd hoped beyond hope that Ladybug herself had sent the valentine, but clearly fate had decided to play a cruel joke on him and get his hopes up for nothing.

“A—Adrien?” He heard his name as if he were underwater. “Is something wrong?”

He looked up and saw Marinette staring at him worriedly. Her eyes were wide with a combination of nervousness and concern. God, he had to pull himself together. He was getting Marinette all worried just because he didn't want to accept that a valentine with no signature was from somebody other than Ladybug. Was it really the end of the world? Adrien forced himself to shake his head and reply. “I'm fine,” he said. He mumbled out an excuse he was barely conscious of making, and returned his gaze to her handwriting.

It really was identical to the writing in the valentine, he thought as he traced the letters. There was no mistaking it. Marinette had written the anonymous valentine.

Wait … Marinette had a crush on him?

As they worked on their project over the next few days, Adrien tried to see if he could catch any subtle hints at how Marinette felt about him, but his efforts were fruitless. It was hard to gauge how somebody felt about you when they could hardly speak to you. The valentine suggested she liked him, but her stammering implied that she was more afraid of him than fond of him. He wasn't sure why she'd be afraid, though. As far as he knew, he hadn't done anything that would have scared her off. He considered asking her outright and decided against it. Confronting her this late after Valentine's Day would probably make it seem like he'd been avoiding the matter, and he didn't want to offend her.

He really had to wonder how and why she had answered the poem he'd thrown away. Nobody should have seen it, especially not any of his classmates. He'd been so careful to hide it during class, and he'd thrown it away immediately afterwards. And even though he hadn't written the intended recipient's name anywhere on the paper, he wasn't sure how Marinette could have come to the conclusion it was meant for her.

Well, on second thought …

She _did_ have pretty dark hair, Adrien thought to himself on the sixth day of their project. Maybe not quite jet black, but it was close. On day nine, he caught himself observing the precise blue of her eyes, looking to see if it was anything like Ladybug's. If he'd had to describe their color, it would have been the blue of an early summer morning just after dawn—blue like the heavens. But not the same blue as Ladybug's. It was similar, but not the same. He would know Ladybug's eyes anywhere.

Then Marinette caught him staring and turned about a hundred different shades of red, and Adrien hastily apologized before turning back to his work.

His close observations were good for one thing, though. Although he wasn't able to figure out how she really felt, he did pick up on tiny habits and mannerisms that he'd never noticed before. She stuck her tongue out when she was concentrating on something. The first time he noticed her doing it, a somewhat idiotic grin spread across his face. He had done the same thing once or twice. Her nose scrunched up when she laughed. He'd had to turn around at just the right moment after class to catch that. Alya could get her to laugh the way Adrien never could. She squirmed and bounced in place when she was excited—he saw her doing it one morning while gushing to Alya about some new fashion magazine she'd just bought. Finding out the little things helped him to think he might actually be on the track to becoming better friends with her.

There was just one problem. He still couldn't manage a normal conversation with her.

He certainly tried. He gave it the best shot he had. Marinette just couldn't seem to talk to him. She would stammer and trip over her words, fumbling sometimes for a solid thirty seconds to come up with a reply, letting out a nervous, embarrassed laugh every so often. If the bell rang while they were talking, she fled to their next class as if the room had caught fire. Adrien wondered why she was so averse to talking to him. It was like she was trying to avoid him.

Finally, on the last day of their project, he decided to ask her about it. The worst thing that could happen would be the usual stammering and rapid exit. Maybe, if the cause was something he had done without realizing it, he could make amends. When they had finished working for the day, he stopped her before she could leave, catching her by the wrist. “Marinette, wait.”

She stared at him like a deer caught in headlights, red-faced. “Wh-what is it?”

Adrien hesitated. He didn't want to make her feel like he was interrogating her or like he was being too nosy, but it was hard to justify this to himself when she looked so nervous. This had been a much better idea in theory. “I just—could I ask you something? Just really quick, before the bell rings?”

That seemed to get her to relax, if only a little. He felt some of the tension leave her body. “I—of course. What … um … what did you want to ask?”

It was Adrien's turn to get nervous now. He shifted his weight self-consciously. “Um, I was just wondering … are you, um, are you … are you avoiding me?” God, why was this so hard? She was a classmate, for heaven's sake, and one of his friends besides. At least, he had liked to think of them as friends. Was that the problem? Was he afraid of her saying they weren't friends and that he was overbearing? Or had finding out the valentine was hers really turned him into this much of a nervous wreck?

Marinette's jaw dropped in what he could only presume was shock. “No!” she exclaimed, much louder and with much more force than he had expected. There was a loud “sshhhh!” from several other students in the library, and Marinette clapped her hands over her mouth, her face reddening all over again. “I'm not avoiding you,” she squeaked out from behind her fingers. “I didn't realize—I never meant—do I really—it seems like—I'm so sorry—I—” She cut herself off and hid her face in her hands.

“I'm the only one in class you don't really talk to, though,” he pointed out, confused.

“That's …” she started, then cut herself off again. She peeked up at him from beneath her hands, and Adrien was suddenly struck by the observation that she looked _very_ cute when she did that. Her face had somehow managed, impossibly, to become even redder than it already had been. “I—I'll see you tomorrow, Adrien.” Before he could protest, she had scooped up her portion of the project and made a beeline for the door, hurrying out like she thought the hounds of hell were at her heels. She left so fast that she was still shoving her work in her bag when she disappeared through the door. Adrien was left standing alone, extremely mystified, in the middle of the library.

“Plagg,” he said, quietly so as not to risk anyone else overhearing, “do you think I scared her off?”

Plagg poked his head out of Adrien's bag. “It seemed like the same as usual to me. She's always like that with you, isn't she?”

“That's not what I—” He sighed. “Yes, she's always like that. I just want to know why. Was it something I did? Did I scare her somehow? Or is she still upset about the whole gum thing?”

Plagg snorted in response. “She probably doesn't even remember the gum thing. Do you really have to ask why she's like that? Even though you know she wrote that love letter you like so much?”

Adrien sank back into his seat slowly. Yes, Marinette had written the valentine, but … didn't people generally at least try to interact with the person they liked? He knew he, at least, did his best to spend time with Ladybug as much as possible. “Shouldn't she want to talk to me if she likes me, though?”

His kwami shrugged. “Maybe. What difference does it make, anyway?”

“It makes a lot of difference,” Adrien said without thinking, and then paused. Why _did_ it make a difference? They had gotten their project done, despite the lack of communication, and it was probably for the best that he didn't ask her about the valentine. There wasn't much of a reason to be so suddenly bothered by her seeming aversion towards talking to him when it had never bothered him like this before.

The answer came to him a few seconds later, and he shoved it away. No, that couldn't be it.

There was no way on earth he was starting to have a crush on Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

 


End file.
